I Am With You Now
by AidenConner
Summary: No one ever talked about Emma. It was like she was an entity. No one knew about her, but no one ever said a word about it. And no matter how hard they tried, they could always feel her.
1. Tear It Down To The Drawing Board

I Am With You Now

Chapter One

Tear It Down To The Drawing Board

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Hey. This is my third LWD fanfic, and I was pretty shady about this whole idea at first. It's grown on me, and I hope it grows on you, too.

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No one ever talked about Emma. It was like she was some sort of entity, rather than a person. You'd see her every once in a while, just for a second. As soon as you turned back to look at her, she was gone, making half of the Venturi's wonder if they had ever really saw her at all.

Sure, everyone know about her, but no one ever dare say a word about it. It was a crime punishable by certain death, or at least an hour sentence to each one's perspective rooms if anyone so much as mentioned the sixteen year old girl that had once made their residence in the Venturi-MacDonald household; and once day just left, leaving no trace that she had ever been there.

This was even a subject that was off limits for Derek, whom was usually used to pushing and tweaking every button in sight. But Emma was a fine two-hole that he wasn't even allowed to glance at.

And that pissed him off.

Derek liked to break the rules. It was his thing. Forget doing homework on a Friday night. He would much rather be at some over-rated high school party full of underage drinking and illegal drugs. "What was that, Nora? You want me to go grocery shopping with you? Gee Wiz...Maybe next time. I think I would much rather be caught smoking a box of menthols in a dark alley, but thanks for asking..."

Of coarse, these words were never uttered out of his mouth, but they were the actuallality of his life. He didn't like rules, and boundaries, and he certainty wasn't going to change his ways for this once, terribly obnoxious one.

And the thing that beat him up about this prison sentence of a rule was in fact, that he didn't understand it. Why shouldn't he be able to talk about thin brunette that had once lived in their basement. Why shouldn't he think about the sexy girl that he had thought of seducing more than one time, and he would of, too. If he had seen her on more than three occasions. He often felt like screaming, just throwing his hands up into the air and asking for something, any tiny little bit of information about why no one would talk or wispier or shout about the well being of Emma MacDonald.

And today was no different. He could feel the tension in the house as he hopped down the stairs late on a monday morning, the heat from the summers day pounding in through the open front door. He thought nothing of it, as he slammed it shut and walked into the kitchen cracking open a can of coke. He swallowed a mouthful, his bare feet freezing against the cold hardwood floor. He burped as he heard a very angry step mom come bursting through the door. "Who shut the door!" She yelled.

"Derek!" He heard Edwin scream from the living room, before his older brother could yell his name.

Nora burst into the kitchen, face red with heat and anger. "Do you relies-" She said shortly "That there are two dozen eggs laying out on the front porch because of you-"

Derek looked at her blankly. How was he soposed to respond to that? Ge hadn't meant to shut the door on her. He had just wanted to save Air Conditioning and Electricity. "Sorry" was all he said, and with that Nora left the kitchen with a dishrag to clean up the mess and a ferocious temper.

Derek couldn't understand how such a small and harmless act could of insued such a vile reaction, but the house had ran considerable more tense in the months past since Emma had left, and everyone could feel it.

Edwin and Lizzie stayed in their rooms almost all the time, and Casey had become particularly unbearable, running the house like it was a jail. All messes had to be cleaned, and she had pulled out her new secret weapon. The Chart.

It seemed like Casey had a chart for everything. Cleaning, TV time, phone times, even who could be in the bathroom when. OK, that was one Derek didn't mind because it pained him to have to stand outside the bathroom door for fifteen minutes just to take a leak.

Derek really never fallowed the charts anyways. He would go along, and let Casey think that she had power over him, because it kept her out of his hair, but at the end of the day, he was going to watch his redwings game, and nothing was going to stop him.

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Derek stumbled through the front door late that night, much later, the sun setting nearly six hours before. His cell phone glowed the time 2:26 AM as he walked up the stairs slowly, still slightly intoxicated from the party he had just attended. He brushed a feather off the shoulder of his leather jacket as he walked down the hall, to his bedroom. He froze as he heard his Dad call his name. "Derek!" He turned around.

"Hey, Dad." Derek said as he met the disgusted face of his father.

"Don't you 'hey dad' me" George said. Derek paused. He had never seen his Dad with that face before. George looked lethal. Absolutely and royally pissed. "I thought you said that you weren't going to do this anymore-"

"Do what?" Derek said cunfused. Him going out was never an issue in their house. Never. It was something that was just expected of him. This was not the first time that he had come in late, and it definitely wasn't going to be the last. In fact, he had probably been coming in past curfew since he was twelve.

"Partying, coming in late at night, not calling, drinking-" George said, counting off the penalties on his fingers.

"Sorry-" Derek said on impulse. At that moment, all he wanted to do was get to bed, but he was certain that he had never told his father that he was going to stop going out. He turned to open the door to his bedroom.

"No, not sorry-" His father said continuing the conversation enough to shock Derek into turning back around. Usually he would just say sorry, and go to bed.

End of story.

"You can't keep pulling this shit, Derek." His father said, trying to assert athority, but looking incredible rediculous in his plaid bathrobe and socks. "Your grounded-"

"What?" Derek said after a minute. He thought that he was hiucinating.

"Two weeks-" George said, holding up his fingers to symbolize.

"Are you kidding me?" Derek yelled, louder than he had intended.

"Are you kidding me?" George said, overreacting. "Your messing up your life, Derek. You can't keep doing this. You're practically failing out of school."

"It's Summer-"

"You know what?" George said. "Maybe I better make it three-"

Derek could feel his blood pressure rising. He knew that he shouldn't, but he couldn't stop himself. "Why didn't Emma get in trouble when she missed curfew?"

Georges voice lowered to a deathly serious tone. "We are not talking about Emma. We are talking about you."

Derek was almost shaking in anger. His voice rose until he was almost screaming. "I am so sick of everyone in this house tip-toeing around Nora careful not to say anything about the blessed first born. I am so sick of having to watch everything I say. I am so god damn sick of never being able to say anything about Emma, wrighting her off like she doesn't even exist-" and with that he went into his room, slamming the door from behind. From the other side of the door he could hear George say "Make it a month."

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Derek paced around his room, furious back and forth for what seemed like hours. Who the hell did his Dad think he was? Who the hell did all of them think they were, to tell him, Derek Venturi what to do. Surely his dad wasn't serious. Surely he didn't expect him to sit in the house in the middle of Summer, for a month.

Bet he wasn't going to test George, not this time, because he sounded serious.

He couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't go on living in this house for the rest of his life, watching every step he took, careful to not place even his baby toe over the line. He had to find out what was going on, why everyone was so tense. He had to.

He walked across the hall and barged into Casey's room, not bothering to knock.

"Derek!" Casey screamed as she looked up at him, and watched him slam the door.

Derek didn't waste anytime. He approached her and ripped the book she was reading from her hands. "What the hell?" She screamed.

"Where's your sister-" Derek asked. Casey ignored him.

"Derek, you smell like a bar. Why don't you just go and sleep it off-"

"Not until you tell me where your sister is!"

"Your drunk-" Casey said as she sat up, looking into his eyes.

"No I'm not, and quit changing the subject. Why is everyone so scared of Emma? Why does no one ever talk about her? Why did I just get grounded for a month because I said her name-"

"No, you weren't grounded because of that." Casey said, "You were grounded because you came into the house at two in the morning, reeking of weed and booze"

Derek approached Casey, getting right up in her face. Staring at her, straight into her eyes. He was so close that he could see tears forming behind them. "Tell me."

"Derek-"

"Tell me!"

"No!"

"TELL ME!"

Casey started to scream. Started to loose it. "Fine, you want to know why everyone is so scared of her, why no one talks about her?"

"Yes."

"My sister is a drug addict!"

And then she cried.

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There you go. Chapter one.

Aiden.


	2. They Lie More Than The Truth

I Am With You Now

Chapter Two

Like The Way They Lie Better Than The Truth

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"What?" Derek asked as he saw a tear roll down Casey's cheek. He didn't know what he had expected to hear, but that definitely wasn't it.

"Emma is a drug addict"

"No way-" Derek said aghast. It was so hard for him to believe that the girl they were talking about- Emma MacDonald- a girl that was so beautiful she could silence a room upon entrance, could be a drug addict, or have any addiction for that matter.

"Why? How?" was all he could say as he sat down on Casey's bed.

"After my Dad died, all of us handled it pretty well- as well as could of been expected-" Casey said as she brushed a tear away from her cheek. "Everyone except for Emma. She was always his favorite, you know. She was good at everything, and I mean everything. I'm good at school, Lizzie's good at sports, but Emma was good at everything. It started off with beer, but then went to pot, and then coke, and now shes bingeing out on heroin practically every day"

Derek looked at her. Just stared. It didn't fit, it didn't add up. No one went from perfect to a junkie.

"Case?" Derek asked as he put his hand on her shoulder. "How did your dad die"

Casey looked at him. "He killed himself. Blew his head off. Right in front of Emma.

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Derek laid in his bed. Just laid there, quiet and still. Not moving.

Just thinking. Thinking and listening to the beating of his heart, and the sounds of his breath as it escaped his lungs.

And the more he thought, the more he came to terms with what he had just heard.

The first time he had seen Emma, she was by no means a happy girl, but she was definitely not a junkie, and the second time, she was absolutely desperate, sobbing on the low roof of their house where she would go and read on.

He would of never even heard her out alone on that roof, if it hadn't been for the fact that they had both been home alone, the family away for the weekend, and they both had been partying.

That night wasn't all that long ago, Derek thought. He remembered it like it was yesterday. He had come home pretty wasted, and was by no means ready for bed. The house was absolutely deadly silent. The kind of silent that gave even he, Derek Venturi, the big man on campus, chills on dark nights. And he could tell that he was not alone on this nite, by the creaking from the east side of the house.

Normally, the first thought that would of popped into his head was that the house was being broken into. Derek had always just been paranoid, and there was even a point in his life where he had been grounded for months because he had kept a knife under his bed that was there just in case someone happened to scale the wall two stories, beat the alarm system, and sneak in not announcing his presence to anyone.

But ever since Nora and her girls had moved in, he had grown acustomed to her oldest creeping along on the roof at all times in the night. Going to parties, usually, but sometimes he would catch her reading out there.

He thought about going out there, but he didn't. He always got this wierd feeling when he was with her.

She would talk to him, and he would over analyze her words so much, that it would drive him crazy. He didn't really want to be himself when he was with her. He didn't want to ever admit that he drank and smoked when he was around her. She seemed to perfect to tolerate any of that.

And Derek hated it.

So most of the time, he just stayed away from her. And that was good.

But tonight, the muffled sounds were enough to draw him to the window, which was cracked open, to allow the nights cool air into the house. He stuck his head out the window, and could see the outline of his stepsister in the glow of the light from her bedroom window, which was located right next to his.

For just a moment he had to stop and catch his breath. She looked so beautiful there, as she sat on the rooftop, the light from her room reflection off of her face in the most perfect way. He wanted her so bad, just then, that his brain didn't stop him from climbing out the window.

It took his a few moments to relise she was crying.

"Emma?" Derek asked as he approached her. "What's wrong"

She avoided his glance as she looked straight ahead. "Nothing's wrong, Derek. Just go away-" She tried to say, but the tears kept rolling down her cheeks. Her voice had a wierd tempo to it. It was shaky and high pitched.

"Emma-" Derek said as he put his hand on her shoulder, sitting down next to her. "Tell me what's wrong-"

He could smell the alcohol in the air, but he wasn't sure if it was on his breath or hers.

"Nothing!" She said, her voice raised, but she collapsed into Derek's arms, crying into his shoulder as he stroked her head, calming her down until she fell asleep.

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Things were adding up to Derek, and he had never been good at math.

There was a knock at his window.

At first he wasn't sure that he heard it, but there it was again. The tap-tap-tap on his window. He got up off his bed, and pulled the window open.

"Hey Derek"

Derek smirked. "The famous Emma MacDonald makes a guest appearance. Imagine that"

This was certainly turning out to be an interesting equation.

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I really want to upadate this soon, so read and review.

I put up a fanfic website for myself. It's pretty cool. I have video promos for all my stories(including this one) and you see what the char actors look like, chat, and rate. The address is freewebs (dot)com(slash)aainsley. The address is also on my fanfic. net profile so check it out.

Aiden.


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